Chef vs OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management comparison

Chef vs. OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Intune

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 6.9%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 3.4%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management is 2.0%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune	6.9%
Chef	3.4%
OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management	2.0%
Other	87.7%

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble

Sr MacOS specialist engineer at Cyber24

Enables management of multiple operating systems with a single license

The best feature is that it's a Microsoft product, so if anything goes wrong, we get quick support for anything required. Remote system functionality allows us to sit anywhere and take control of any device via remote management. We can enhance security for clients' laptops with built-in Microsoft Defender, which is available with the Microsoft Intune license. We use it for reporting purposes through endpoint analytics. When pushing scripting, there are two types available: remediation script and reservation script. Through endpoint analytics, you can push defender policies to clients. It helps with reporting, inventory updates, and monitoring tenant status health.

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Walter Ochieng Odhiambo

Software Engineer and Tester at Safaricom

Automation has transformed daily infrastructure work and now frees teams to focus on new challenges

One thing that Chef needs to improve on is making it available in as many languages as possible. There should be a focus on how to make it understandable, not just to infrastructure people, but also to those working in monitoring. How can we ensure that it is part of their daily input? That is something that still has a small missing link. We are almost there, but it can help us achieve outcomes in the future in terms of objectives, not just workflows and visibility. How can we make real-time interactive dashboards more available? Look at what kind of tools can be integrated with them, not just working with the ones like Chef Kitchen and Habitat, but trying to make it even more flexible than what we have right now. On support, I think there should be more focus on how we can achieve AI automations in answering questions for beginners and addressing deep concerns without general manual management.

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it_user1272306

Chief Technology Officer at DoITWise

Helpful impact analysis and the discovery capability is quite good

This tool works hand-in-hand with RPA technology. RPA will allow you to control your servers by deploying the server automation agent. You don't have the discovery, but then you can deploy the policies that maintain the authorized versus current state. On top of that, you can use server automation to deploy patches or remediate configuration issues on the operating system. My advice to anybody who is implementing this solution is to ensure that the process is set up properly, first. Once the process is set up, the tool will do the rest for you. Overall, this is a comprehensive tool that works well, and I wouldn't touch it other than to enhance the UI and make containerization work without the CDF. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"I would rate the stability of Microsoft Intune nine out of ten."

"I like how Intune brings everything into one place. For example, you can set up conditional access to applications and devices inside Intune. I also like the segregation inside the Intune devices. You can segregate them by Windows, iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and Android. You can sort it by platform, so you don't need to go into the devices section."

"When a user receives the machine, sets it up, and turns it on, it connects to the domain and begins installing software, becoming ready within approximately half an hour, which represents a significant time savings for IT departments."

"What I like the most about Microsoft Intune is its ability to manage mobile devices. Through integration with System Center, it can also manage desktops and laptops."

"One of our clients migrated the model workplace based on Intune, achieving a 78 percent cost reduction, which is quite a lot."

"The standout features of Intune are its excellent mobile device management and highly effective application management capabilities."

"It has improve our organization through the remote management of non-domain joined devices."

"Microsoft Intune is far more efficient and faster than MECM."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"Stable and scalable configuration management and automation tool. Installing it is easy. Its most valuable feature is its compliance, e.g. it's very good."

"Chef has impacted my organization positively by ensuring that consistent deployments across production and test environments help more effective testing and faster deployments mean that more work can be done in one release cycle."

"Using Chef for automating infrastructure and applications in my organization has helped us reduce manual tasks by more than forty percent, thereby saving significant revenue for the client."

"It streamlined our deployments and system configurations across the board rather than have us use multiple configurations or tools, basically a one stop shop."

"The most important thing is it can handle a 100,000 servers at the same time easily with no time constraints."

"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."

"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."

"Automation is everything. Having so many servers in production, many of our processes won't work nor scale. So, we look for tools to help us automate the process, and Chef is one of them."

More Chef pros

"The most valuable feature is the impact analysis."

"We use it for managing our desktops; we have 350,000 desktops and it allows us to manage and control them relatively easily."

"Helps me perform changes in connected infrastructure thanks to the discovery features."

Cons

"Microsoft Intune's support for Mac devices is lacking and could be improved."

"There are a couple of issues with stability."

"More integration with monitoring tools is needed."

"Setting up Intune Autopilot can be a little complicated."

"There are a lot of updates coming from Microsoft that suddenly affect our security policies."

"I want more secure, reliable, and efficient security policies."

"A detailed device diagnostic feature is missing. Also, operating system deployment and imaging are missing."

"At this time, I do not have any areas for improvement. I have heard about some downtime, but I am not in the local IT team."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."

"One thing that Chef needs to improve on is making it available in as many languages as possible."

"There is a slight barrier to entry if you are used to using Ansible, since it is Ruby-based."

"The learning curve is steep due to Chef's Ruby-based DSL and the complex components of cookbooks and recipes, which can be challenging for new users, especially those without programming backgrounds."

"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."

"In terms of revenue, I have not observed much because it is holistically depending on the project."

"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."

"There appears to be no effort to fix the command line utility functionality, which is definitely broken, provides a false positive for a result when you perform the operation, and doesn't work."

More Chef cons

"The native UI should be simplified because it is outdated and a little bit over-complicated."

"The infrastructure itself is stable, but the agent has a lot of problems."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Intune is linked with Microsoft. We can deploy the Microsoft E365 license to users by Intune. There are different types of licenses, such as device administrator licenses, E5 licenses for device enrollment manually, and P1 and p2 licenses for device enrollment automatically. These are the licenses required for the administration."

"I rate Intune five out of 10 for pricing. It's expensive."

"The cost is somewhat on the higher side, particularly when considering certain price points, especially in markets like India."

"Microsoft Intune is available for individual purchase at a low per-device cost."

"We use Defender ATP and E5 licenses."

"There is a license required to use the solution. If you're core users in Office 365, for example, you have Outlook email and E3 license, this is only email. You have to buy an EMS license to have Microsoft Intune. It is expensive."

"While I can't provide insights from a business perspective, it's worth noting that the pricing may differ significantly, and the discount we received might not be reflective of standard business rates."

"The cost is handled through our Office 365 license, so I have yet to be able to compare it directly with other tools in its class."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"Purchasing the solution from AWS Marketplace was a good experience. AWS's pricing is pretty in line with the product's regular pricing. Though instance-wise, AWS is not the cheapest in the market."

"When we're rolling out a new server, we're not using the AWS Marketplace AMI, we're using our own AMI, but we are paying them a licensing fee."

"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."

"The price per node is a little weird. It doesn't scale along with your organization. If you're truly utilizing Chef to its fullest, then the number of nodes which are being utilized in any particular day might scale or change based on your Auto Scaling groups. How do you keep track of that or audit it? Then, how do you appropriately license it? It's difficult."

"I wasn't involved in the purchasing, but I am pretty sure that we are happy with the current pricing and licensing since it never comes up."

"The price is always a problem. It is high. There is room for improvement. I do like purchasing on the AWS Marketplace, but I would like the ability to negotiate and have some flexibility in the pricing on it."

"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."

"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."

More Chef pricing and cost advice

"This is a really good tool for the money."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Comms Service Provider

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Retailer

University

28%

Government

13%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	124
Midsize Enterprise	53
Large Enterprise	168

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	19

No data available

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?

Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...

What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?

Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...

How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?

Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Chef?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we sidestepped it by using Cinc because none of the fun...

What needs improvement with Chef?

I would add that Ruby is a domain-specific language in the Chef dialect, which is a learning curve, but so is Terrafo...

What is your primary use case for Chef?

My main use case for Chef is configuration and deployments. We receive blank servers and use Chef to build predefined...

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Product Reports

Microsoft Intune

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Chef

Download Chef product report

Configuration Management

Download OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management product report

OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

No data available

Micro Focus ZENworks Configuration Management, HPE CMS, HPE Configuration Management, Micro Focus Configuration Management

Overview

Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based service designed for device management, security, and compliance. It supports automation and facilitates endpoint management for Windows, iOS, and Android devices, ensuring data protection and efficient policy enforcement.

Microsoft Intune offers seamless integration with tools like Windows Autopilot to automate device setup and deployment. Integrated with Azure Active Directory, it enhances policy management while providing robust reporting and analytics tools for compliance tracking. Despite its intuitive interface aimed at simplifying navigation and device security management, there are challenges such as compatibility issues with Linux and Mac, limited policy support for Android, and demands for better third-party integration. It's widely used for both corporate-owned devices and BYOD scenarios in dynamic IT environments.

What are the key features of Microsoft Intune?

Windows Autopilot: Automates device setup for rapid deployment.
Azure Active Directory Integration: Enhances user policy management.
Reporting and Analytics: Improves compliance visibility.
Mobile Application Management: Ensures app security without compromising personal data.
Cloud-Based Management: Allows management from any location.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Time Efficiency: Automation reduces time in policy enforcement and configuration updates.
Enhanced Security: Ensures data protection across corporate-owned and BYOD devices.
Improved Compliance: Advanced reporting tools enhance compliance visibility.
Flexible Management: Cloud-based nature supports management from any location.

In industries such as finance and healthcare, Microsoft Intune is implemented to ensure data protection and compliance with regulatory standards. Manufacturing sectors utilize Intune for managing a distributed workforce across global locations, while educational institutions employ it to secure and manage devices in learning environments supporting both students and faculty.

Microsoft

Chef, is the leader in DevOps, driving collaboration through code to automate infrastructure, security, compliance and applications. Chef provides a single path to production making it faster and safer to add value to applications and meet the demands of the customer. Deployed broadly in production by the Global 5000 and used by more than half of the Fortune 500, Chef develops 100 percent of its software as open source under the Apache 2.0 license with no restrictions on its use. Chef Enterprise Automation Stack™, a commercial distribution, is developed solely from that open source code and unifies security, compliance, infrastructure and application automation with observability. Chef provides an unequaled developer experience for the Coded Enterprise by enabling users to express infrastructure, security policies and the application lifecycle as code, modernizing development, packaging and delivery of any application to any platform. For more information, visit http://chef.io and follow @chef.

Progress Software

OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management helps you manage both devices and software across your entire environment. A single, unified web console provides insight to both devices and software, improves visibility, and helps reduce costs.

OpenText

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap

Tech Mahindra, NNIT, ASIC

Chef vs. OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management